Re: What is the "open web" ?

"Nevertheless, the hardware itself and the firmware running I it are proprietary. I am trying to understand where people draw the line I terms of functionality that is ok to expose on the open web. It seems in the case of graphics hardware, if the hardware is widely available off-the-shelf and can be made using open source drivers to work on multiple platforms and support a standard API (in this case OpenGL), then this is ok. But maybe I'm wrong there ?"

I think you are misunderstanding. There are graphics cards that support a fully free software stack and if they don't, such as requiring non-free firmware, then it isn't free software compatible. You should listen to Richard Stallman's talk, "copyright vs community" to understand why "free hardware" isn't analogous to free software. Or why there's no such thing as free hardware rather.

Mark Watson <watsonm@netflix.com> wrote:

>Sent from my iPhone
>
>On Jun 2, 2013, at 1:51 PM, Andreas Kuckartz <A.Kuckartz@ping.de>
>wrote:
>
>> Mark Watson:
>>> Sure. I meant that some people would like the W3C policy to refer to
>>> Free Open Source rather than just Open Source.
>>
>> The term "Free and Open Source Software" (FOSS) could or should be
>used
>> instead of Open Source. But that would not result in any practical
>> difference because all Free / Copyleft licenses are also Open Source
>> licenses.
>
>The converse is not true, though (IIUC).
>
>>
>> More precise would be referring to the Open Source Definition
>> (http://opensource.org/docs/osd) and the list of OSI-approved
>licenses
>> (http://opensource.org/licenses).
>
>I understood that not all those licenses would qualify as 'FOSS'. Am I
>using the term FOSS incorrectly ?
>
>>
>>>> Neither Geolocation nor WebGL "basically" require closed
>>>> source drivers.
>>>
>>> I believe they require proprietary hardware/firmware to be
>performant,
>>> though I could be wrong there. Or this could be true now but will
>>> change in future (certainly it will change when the various patents
>>> involved expire).
>>
>> Well, some manufacturers of 3D graphics hardware certainly make it
>very
>> difficult for Open Source developers, which resulted in this well
>known
>> reaction by Linus Torvalds last year:
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ
>>
>> But those difficulties are not inherent in 3D.
>>
>> (One main problem here in my opinion is that there are Linux
>> distributions which promote and encourage the installation of closed
>> source drivers for certain graphics hardware and by doing so
>encourage
>> the hardware manufacturers to continue their bad practices.)
>>
>> ***
>>
>> Maybe someone reading this mail is interested in this:
>>
>> 15-Way Open vs. Closed Source NVIDIA/AMD Linux GPU Comparison
>> Published on April 29, 2013
>> Written by Michael Larabel
>>
>http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_nvidia_15way&num=1
>>
>> AMD Releases Open-Source UVD Video Support
>> Published on April 02, 2013
>> Written by Fatima Sheremetyeva
>>
>http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_opensource_uvd&num=1
>
>Nevertheless, the hardware itself and the firmware running I it are
>proprietary. I am trying to understand where people draw the line I
>terms of functionality that is ok to expose on the open web. It seems
>in the case of graphics hardware, if the hardware is widely available
>off-the-shelf and can be made using open source drivers to work on
>multiple platforms and support a standard API (in this case OpenGL),
>then this is ok. But maybe I'm wrong there ?
>
>...Mark
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Andreas

-- 
Sent from my Replicant phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Visit replicant.us